Introduction

In response to growing concerns about children’s safety online, legislators across the United States are contemplating age verification mandates as a way to limit the potential harms of online experiences and restrict access to age-inappropriate material. In 2023, more than 60 bills were introduced at the state and federal level requiring greater parental consent, age restrictions, or safety-by-design measures.¹ Half as many bills have already been introduced in the first few months of 2024.² Most of these laws, passed and pending, target youth access to online adult content and sales that are age-gated “in real life.” Yet some states are going further to apply age verification requirements to social media, responding to concerns from parents and teens, schools, legislators, and regulators about children’s experiences online.³

While more efforts are needed to ensure children can safely and securely access online spaces, current technical limitations often mean that age verification mandates may actually pose more risks than benefits. Many social media platforms and other online operators already implement a wide range of age assurance practices to comply with existing laws and uphold their own terms and conditions. These methods aren’t perfect, but mandating age verification, which often necessitates sharing government-issued identification, can negatively impact users’ constitutional rights, privacy, and security.

Previous attempts to protect minors from harmful material online through content restrictions and required age verification—such as the 1996 Communications Decency Act and 1998 Child Online Protection Act—have largely been ruled unconstitutional by federal courts for being overly broad, restricting freedom of expression, and limiting access to protected speech.⁴ These new laws are likely to face the same fate, especially as some of the champions of these bills raise concerns about veiled attempts to restrict access to critical, and often politicized, information about gender, sexuality, and reproductive health care.⁵

Given the outsized impact of age verification requirements and the potential for serious unintended repercussions, it is important for users, lawmakers, regulators, industry, and civil society to understand the recent push toward age verification and its implications for how children and adults use and access content online. This report aims to demystify and clarify key concepts related to online age verification by providing a digestible survey of (1) current terminology and practices; (2) recent state and federal efforts requiring online age verification; (3) legal, technical, and social implementation challenges; (4) social media age-based features; and (5) recommendations for minimizing potential harms of age verification moving forward.